


Quick Fix

by RiddleRose



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: M/M, Plumber Kink, This was an accident oops, mild misuse of wizardry, not you dd, wizardry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-24 20:53:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7522753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiddleRose/pseuds/RiddleRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tom and Carl met because of some faulty plumbing, and the habit stuck.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quick Fix

Carl is actually a great plumber. Carl has been handy since he was a kid, and learned to fix things around the house to help his mom out. Carl likes fixing things - it’s part of why he’s such a good wizard. Carl can look at a thing, really look at it, figure out the problem, figure out a solution, and then fix it. This applies equally to wizardry and household chores.

Tom likes handymen. Tom discovered this when he was twelve, and an electrician came to fix something in his house. Twelve-year-old Tom learned several things about himself that day, chief among them that the reason he’d never been into girls like most of his friends was, apparently, because he liked a man in a uniform, getting his hands dirty. Tom explored this interest unintentionally every single time he walked by the men washing windows ten stories up, every time he drove past a man digging a hole in a road, and especially, especially, every time the pipes broke in his first crapshack apartment and the plumber came, and sprawled his long body under the sink and laid his tools all over Tom’s spotless floor. That was before Carl got the job at the TV station, when he was still paying his way through college picking up odd jobs around campus.

Carl figured out that Tom liked handymen the fourth time he was called to fix Tom’s plumbing. He’d been a wizard for years by that point, and he had a hunch that there was something about this kid. It was just a hunch, but Carl was a good wizard, and he listened to his hunches. Whenever that address put in a request for service (which happened a lot, it was a terrible apartment) Carl made sure it got assigned to him. The fourth time it happened, Tom answered the door already blushing and Carl got it. He fixed the problem, but it took a little longer than it would have, normally. And even though, technically, it might not have been a responsible use of wizardry, he whispered a few words in the Speech to the sink, and a month later it obligingly collapsed, gurgling laughter at Tom as he tried to wash his hands.

Tom opened the door to Carl’s polite knock soaking wet and blushing, and Carl discovered something that had been lurking in the back of his stomach for a month. There was water everywhere. “Well, fuck,” said Carl, and Tom blushed even harder.

He fixed the sink. He was always going to fix the sink, because Carl was good at fixing things. He had to lie down on Tom’s no longer spotless floor in a puddle of water to do it, and Tom apologized and offered him a beer and the use of his dryer and shower afterwards, and when Carl came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist to find Tom standing on a chair in the kitchen talking to the light bulb about shorting out power in the whole building he said, in the Speech, “I think that might be considered an abuse of your Art, Tom,” and Tom fell off the chair.

He fixed the bruise on Tom’s elbow where he’d banged it against the counter, and he fixed the slight strain in Tom’s left ankle from when he slipped off the chair, and then he fixed the frown at the corner of Tom’s mouth by kissing it, and then the power went out. Fixing the electricity took quite a lot longer than it normally would have, because Carl was occupied by the story Tom was telling him with his fingers and mouth. Later he tested a spell he’d been working on to snip a piece of that morning out and go back to it, so the lights got fixed on time after all, and no one but Tom and Carl noticed that Carl missed two classes and his Adviser meeting that day, and Tom was late to work by three hours. 

Tom could have moved out of the crapshack apartment the next year, but then he wouldn’t have had an excuse for Carl to sprawl his long body out under the sink, and float his tools all over Tom’s spotless kitchen, and swear in the Speech. So he stayed there, and when, two years later, Carl said to him, “Let me build you a house,” Tom said, in the Speech, “Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> This appeared fully-formed in my head after reading a post by tumblr user imkerfuffled, about how Carl can fix a white hole's plumbing, but not the kitchen sink.
> 
> Original fic with post here: http://riddlerose.tumblr.com/post/147607752321/carl-can-fix-the-plumbing-in-a-white-hole-but-he


End file.
